If you don't know how to truely cook
You don't know how to cook until you can look at a pile of raw food an envision it cooked - without once looking something up. How to Cook Without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart will help you to do that.
Recipes - 5 stars, format - 4 stars
This is a great basic cookbook. I've completely adopted Anderson's method of steam-sauteeing vegetables as the every-day standard in my kitchen. But the format of recipes within recipes (for which you have to refer to recipes on other pages, or in other sections) is annoying and something I never like in a cookbook.
All of Anderson's books use this format, but her recipes are so good that it's worth the relatively minor nuisance. Still I had to drop a star off my review because of it.
I'm tempted to call it redundant, or at least mistitled
I mean, come on. Look at the title. It's too ironic to look at without laughing. And Cat Cora hadn't even written Cooking From the Hip yet; if there's anything that describes How to Cook Without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart better than its own title, it's Cora's title.
It's not a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. As it happens, it borrows a technique that's been used very successfully by cooking teachers for years, the "master recipe", whereby the writer throws out a recipe that demonstrates a general principle and then presents similar recipes as variations on a theme. This approach was developed to a high art by Julia Child in particular (The Way to Cook uses master recipes almost exclusively); Escoffier relied on it heavily, possibly the only way to make ... Read More
A Must-have Cookbook
I admit to being a cookbook-aholic - some are fun to read yet I don't actually use them, some are the opposite. This one is both. It's one of those cookbooks that I end up tabbing so I can go back for a refresher. The recipes are imaginative and do-able, and range from ambitious to embarrassingly easy (best example of this is the Warm White Bean Spread that takes about 30 seconds to make and tastes heavenly).
I especially like the way the book is organized, which is by method. For example she goes through sautes ("If you've seen one saute, you've seen them all") with basic methods for sauteing various meats. Then she provides a basic method for pan sauces, followed by several variations that can be made using the basic method. If it sounds ... Read More
Pam makes it look easy--and it is!
How to Cook Without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart
By learning the basic techniques in How to Cook Without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart, I'm able to sautee, for example, several different kinds of meats from my memory (and I don't have the greatest memory!) If I look anything up before sauteeing my meat, it's only to decide on a delicious sauce to accompany it. My family loves the Sauteed Boneless Pork Chops (cut from a boneless pork loin) with Orange-Dijon Pan Sauce with Rosemary.
The author covers everything from salads to side dishes to quick deserts. All of the chapters are fabulous, but I've personally gotten the most out of those dedicated to meat, chicken, and fish.
How to Cook Without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart is wonderful and I'd recommend it as a ... Read More
